Lace

by Shirley Conran

  Life-size stone nymphs lined the path that led through the garden to the swimming pool, at one end of which a frenzied stone orgy was in permanent progress. Beyond the pool stood three Corinthian columned Greek temples, and under the central pediment a more sedate party was in progress: turbaned Indian servants proffered drinks, including five different sorts of freshly squeezed fruits for anyone who didn’t want whiskey or champagne, as well as a profusion of bite-size hot pastry shells filled with seafood.

  When Lili appeared between the Greek columns, wearing a flesh-coloured chiffon bikini, there was a slight but noticeable lull in the talk. She settled onto a purple, cotton-covered couch. A pink-turbaned Indian bowed as he offered her caviar from one silver salver, cold lobster and a dish of little crabs from another. Suddenly, Lili felt hungry again.

  Zimmer propped himself up on one elbow. “Look who’s just arrived,” he murmured. “Stiarkoz with La Divina, making her usual late entrance.”

  All eyes flickered toward the avenue of cypress, down which a small, silver-haired man slowly walked toward the pool. Beside him was La Divina, looking exactly as she did on all her record albums, with her magnificent head thrown back. La Divina managed to carry off a big nose, a big mouth and a big head: enormous quantities of coarse, black hair made her look a little top-heavy and her heavily made-up doe eyes glittered. She was a tough prima donna who for many years—at least four of them before his wife died—had openly been the mistress of Jo Stiarkoz.

  Now, as she moved slowly forward, her quivering, upthrust breasts threatened to break loose from her low-cut gown of mantis-green gauze. She no longer sang in opera but her voice was still superb. All over the world people waited all night to get into one of her concerts, while managers shuddered at the thought of the trouble she caused. Their hostess fluttered forward to greet her latest guests, as the turbaned Indians offered platters of fresh salmon dressed with fennel.

  Shortly afterward Madame Fourier clapped her hands and suggested that they all have lunch.

  “I thought that was lunch,” groaned Zimmer. “I’ve already eaten too much,” he added. “D’you want to meet Stiarkoz? He’s an incredibly rich, Greek shipowner with a wonderful art collection, a really nice old boy.”

  46

  SWINGING IN THE hammock on the geranium-scented patio, Lili could hear the nurse arguing at the front door. Presently she appeared with a golden antique birdcage in one hand. Inside it was a white cockatoo. “I don’t know where we’re going to put this—the saints alone know what it eats!” The beautiful bird looked at Lili with bright topaz eyes. Delighted, Lili jumped off the hammock, pulling up the yellow strings of her bikini top.

  “No card?”

  “No. And the delivery boy didn’t know who sent it.”

  Half an hour later, while Lili was still playing with the cockatoo, a camellia tree arrived. Hanging from one leafy branch was a small packet wrapped in pale blue silk and tied with fine gold chain.

  “Feel how heavy this thin chain is,” the nurse said. “D’you think it could be real gold?”

  Inside the pale blue silk package was a white seashell in which nestled a square-cut aquamarine pendant on an almost-invisible gold chain.

  “It’s the colour of the Aegean,” Lili cried, running to a mirror in the living room and clasping it around her neck. In the greenish light she saw the pale blue rays flashing from her throat.

  The telephone rang. “Hello, Zimmer. Did you by any chance send me a bird in a cage or anything else this morning? . . . Hang on a minute, that’s the doorbell again.”

  This time a pale blue beach buggy awaited her signature on the receipt. On the driver’s seat lay a thick, cream envelope addressed simply to “Lili”. Inside was a card across which was neatly penned, “Shall we say Senequier this evening at eight?”

  Lili tore back to the telephone. “No, it’s not me,” Zimmer said. “It’s either Fourier or Jo Stiarkoz. I’d bet on Stiarkoz. Fourier would merely have sent you a diamond brooch. Stiarkoz has more style. Now that I think about it, why hasn’t Fourier sent you a diamond-studded something? You must be losing your touch, Lili.”

  “Maybe he thinks you and I are having a scene?”

  Zimmer giggled. “Not me, darling, that they know. I’ll drive you into St. Tropez this evening, then you can say you were with me if Serge hears about it.”

  Lili shivered. Serge would beat her mercilessly if he suspected she were flirting with anyone. Once he had actually cracked her rib. Particularly since her American tour, he had seen that she was never left unguarded.

  That evening Zimmer drove the buggy into St. Tropez. Lili had dressed with unusual care; she wore a white silk blazer and a finely pleated skirt that matched; besides that she wore nothing, no blouse, underwear or jewelry, except for the glowing aquamarine that settled at the base of her throat.

  St. Tropez looked like a lavish film set. Where trawlers and fishing smacks had once anchored, the harbour was now crowded with expensive white yachts. The quay was a solid line of smart boutiques and casual but expensive restaurants; under the famous orange awning of Senequier, the beautiful people who sipped aperitifs were better dressed than the patrons of the Ritz bar in Paris. Threading her way to the table that Zimmer had reserved, Lili reflected that the women looked straight out of the pages of last week’s Elle; not one pair of white jeans had cost less than a thousand francs, not one of these beautifully tousled women had taken less than two hours to dress.

  At exactly eight o’clock Zimmer winked at Lili. “I was right, there’s Stiarkoz getting out of his Rolls Royce. I wonder what conjuring tricks he’s planning for the cocktail hour. Perhaps he’ll pull a string of pearls out of his ears?”

  He stood up and waved to Stiarkoz, who bowed slightly and moved to their table. He was a well-cared-for man of sixty, with thick silver eyebrows that hung over alert eyes. His lower lip protruded under his upper and curled up at the left corner, giving him a permanent look of amused belligerence. Stiarkoz was a careful man. He never signed his name to any document, whether a check or a love letter, because he did not like to commit himself. But he made up his mind fast, especially when he wanted something. And he wanted Lili.

  Although Lili did not sense the seriousness of his interest, it was immediately apparent to Zimmer. Stiarkoz did not seem surprised to see Zimmer and made no effort to get rid of him; he obviously didn’t want to alarm Lili. He wasn’t going to make a crude grab at her. This was an exploratory meeting.

  They ate a leisurely dinner by candlelight. Stiarkoz didn’t ask Lili personal questions, but he sought her opinion on everything they discussed and listened carefully to her answers. As Zimmer described the making of Q, Lili felt less self-conscious, and she even started to laugh as he recounted an incident when a huge polystyrene rock had bounced off her head. Stiarkoz seemed pleased that both of them had so obviously enjoyed their visit to his country. “All Greeks love Greece,” he said, “especially the ones who live in London, Paris, New York and Monte Carlo.”

  Zimmer’s next film was also going to be shot outside Athens. “It’s not just another sex epic,” he explained, tongue-in-cheek. “It’s a modern Greek tragedy played against a background of the international shipping business, a fight to the death between two shipowners who both want to marry the same beautiful girl, the daughter of a third Greek shipowner. Her father forces her to choose the richer man, rather than the handsome younger one who only owns one cargo boat.”

  “Brute,” said Lili.

  “Not at all,” said Stiarkoz. “Many Greek shipping marriages are arranged. Marriage is considered too serious a family matter to be decided by love. So is money.”

  “Are all big shipowners Greek?” Lili asked. “It always sounds like such a clannish business.” She sipped champagne as Stiarkoz took out a brown leather cigar case and selected one of the five cigars.

  “Most of the world’s commercial shipping is controlled by Greeks.” He sniffed the cigar. “Out of a total dead weight t
onnage of about fifty-two million, Onassis controls about four million and Niarchos about five million, apart from his shipyards.” Gently he slid the band from his Monte Cristo Number 2. “Which leaves about forty-three million tons belonging to a small group of people that you never read about in the gossip columns, people like the Paterases and the Hadjipaterases, the Colocotronises, and the Lemoses; usually all intermarried.”

  He leaned back and took out a tiny gold cigar cutter. Lili looked at it. “Once this belonged to my great-grandfather,” Stiarkoz said.

  “Was he a shipowner?”

  “Eventually. But he started as a barefoot sailor, trading around the Greek islands.”

  “A simple sailor?”

  Stiarkoz smiled. “Powerful Greek shipowners are never simple. They are highly complex men with a minimum amount of sociability and a maximum of egocentricity. Other people usually can’t stand them.” Again he grinned at her.

  Two expensively dressed girls approached their table. The redhead wore a sea-green lace see-through catsuit, her companion wore three blond hairpieces above a red and white, diagonally striped mini-dress that barely covered her bottom. Stiarkoz put his cigar down, politely stood up and greeted them, but didn’t introduce them to his companions. When they moved on, he again sat down. “The husband of the lady in green is an arms dealer and has the mooring next to mine in Monte Carlo. I didn’t think you would have much in common.”

  At this moment a waiter hurried up to Stiarkoz with a telephone. He excused himself for a moment, picking up the receiver. “Well, what’s the present price of bauxite? No, no, on the Chicago exchange. . . . Well find out. . . .” He called for another telephone, dialed and said, “Get Amsterdam on the telex and check the bauxite price.

  “This won’t take a moment, forgive me,” he apologised to Lili. “Well, make them. . . . Well, hire another Lear jet. . . . Dammit, don’t bother me with details, hire two. . . . Now, what are the bauxite figures? . . . Fine, buy six hundred and fifty thousand from Chicago.”

  The two telephones were removed from the table and Jo smiled at Lili.

  “Finish about the shipowners,” she said. “What do they do with all that money?”

  He turned toward her in his chair. “If you were to ask these men why they are amassing all their wealth and what they’re going to do with it, they simply wouldn’t be able to give you an answer. You’d be surprised to see how poorly they live, particularly the women of shipowners.”

  “What about love?” asked Lili.

  “They’re interested in sex, of course, but again in their own special way. For the normal person, sex doesn’t exist in a vacuum. But if a Greek shipowner meets a woman and likes her, then he wants sex with her straightaway. Immediately!” He shrugged his shoulders. “Just as they can’t make friends, they find it difficult to approach a woman, and afterward they don’t know what to do with that woman, which I think is appalling.”

  “They sound like lousy lovers.”

  “Certainly there’s a lot of divorce, but a major reason for that is because the women always think they’re marrying a husband and then they wake up to find they’ve married a business.”

  “Don’t they ever think about anything except business?”

  Stiarkoz reflected. “After their fiftieth birthday, they seem to wake up—suddenly—and realise that there’s not much time left. It’s exactly at this moment that they feel panic and get into those messy situations with mistresses, divorces and remarriages. That’s when they start to look pathetic. Their end is often positively tragic, because they eventually realise that business is not the only thing in life. Then they realise all they’ve missed.”

  The following day Lili lurched up and down the coastal road in the beach buggy, then played in the shade with her cockatoo. She was excited but wary, for the nurse had persistently questioned her about her anonymous gifts and was clearly suspicious about Lili’s evening out with Zimmer.

  After an evening swim off the rocks, Lili showered and changed into gold Grecian sandals and a white silk, ankle-length sheath under which she wore nothing.

  At eight o’clock a chauffeur-driven Rolls appeared. The nurse looked surprised, then worried. “Where are you going? I must know where you’re going!” She caught hold of Lili’s fragile wrist. “You’re ill, you mustn’t go out alone.”

  Lili quickly twisted her arm away and slid into the backseat. Speeding through the fragrance of the warm pine trees, Lili felt the excitement of an obedient child who suddenly defies its nursemaid and, as the evening breeze lifted her dark hair, she started defiantly to sing the “Marseillaise”.

  This time Jo Stiarkoz was waiting at a discreet table in the rear of the café. She was not physically attracted to this small, quiet Greek, but she was enjoying her defiance and she felt he was no threat. He would, of course, make a pass at her, but she felt it was unlikely that he would pursue it if she made it clear that she wasn’t interested.

  To Lili’s surprise, Stiarkoz made no attempt to touch her. He didn’t try to detain her after they had finished dinner, although it was barely past eleven o’clock.

  “I know you’ve been ill,” he said, “so I don’t expect you want a late night.”

  They drove back to Cap Camerat through a silent landscape. Stiarkoz knew that he was no longer young, and he had never been handsome. But a man who has made billions is generally an interesting man, provided he talks about subjects that interest him. Jo wanted Lili to feel at ease with him. He knew that any man who got the chance probably made a pass at Lili, so he wasn’t going to try. He wanted her to wonder why he didn’t.

  And he wanted her to wonder what it would be like if he did.

  The following morning Lili went down to the beach at ten o’clock and swam ten meters to a small speedboat that was waiting to carry her to the Minerva. The bay wasn’t deep enough for the huge yacht to come in close to shore.

  As she was helped up to the white deck, Lili suddenly felt as free as a seagull. Strength flooded back into her body. As Stiarkoz showed her over the vessel, she again found herself humming the defiant tune of the “Marseillaise”, the rallying song of the French Revolution.

  According to Stiarkoz, she was a small boat—no swimming pool and only one helicopter. But the Minerva could sail across the Atlantic, if Lili wished. She could cruise anywhere in the world.

  He had ordered a cabin to be prepared for Lili’s use. The rosewood-panelled stateroom was somewhat larger than Lili’s bedroom at the villa; two sea-blue bathrooms led off it, both with the regulation dolphin gold-plated fittings, both stocked with expensive toilet articles, Christian Dior perfumes and a complete, unopened range of Estée Lauder makeup. The walk-in closet contained a stock of scarlet dress boxes from Joy, the most exclusive beachwear shop in Monte Carlo. Six new swimsuits, six new beach wraps and six couture evening dresses hung from a rail. On the bed lay a big Christian Dior box, inside which was a cream silk, lace-trimmed negligee, delicate and beautiful as an antique christening robe. “In case you wished to change or rest,” explained Stiarkoz with a wave of his hand.

  They lay on deckbeds on the main deck sipping champagne under the blue awning. They were not entirely alone—a secretary and two aides moved discreetly in and out of the forward cabin and from behind the door Lili could hear the impersonal clatter of a telex. Two stewards attended them on deck, along with a large, silent sailor with a mole on his left cheek, who followed Stiarkoz everywhere. “Socrates, my bodyguard,” Stiarkoz explained.

  All day they stayed at sea, swimming from the boat or lying in the sun. Jo asked no questions about Lili’s background or her work. (In fact, the evening after he met her, one of his shore secretaries had handed him a hair-raising dossier on her.) Jo chatted skillfully with Lili; he instinctively sensed her mood and tailored his conversation to suit it. She is the most sensational woman I have ever seen, he thought. She is young enough to be my granddaughter and I do not give a damn. I am about to make a public fool of myself and I do
not give a damn. I am only afraid that she will make a fool of me, and if she does, then life will not be worth living. Jo knew he wasn’t being prudent; he wondered why he put his private life at risk, but Lili’s presence drove all prudence from his head.

  In a daffodil bikini she was sitting on the edge of a chair with one foot up on the seat and her head thrown back, as she held the last spear of asparagus above her mouth and sucked at the tip. She looked as natural and unaffected as a charming little animal, totally unaware of anything except the sun, the sea and her own laughter.

  Jo watched the butter sauce running down her chin. He thought, she is a beautiful, sensual, ignorant, uncultivated little savage. Why don’t I just give her dinner this evening, say good-bye nicely, send her home in the Rolls and never see her again? But what he said was, “Do you want more, Lili?”

  At dusk they docked in the glittering port of Monaco. The castellated towers of the royal palace topped The Rock to the west of the harbour. Beyond it rose the town, pink and tawny layers against the lavender mountains. As they slid into harbour, the sky turned from aquamarine to violet, to purple, then to velvet black and strings of tiny lights lit up the town.

  Because of the heat, the roof was open in the grill room of the Hotel de Paris. They ate quail stuffed with white grapes, after which they strolled down the hill to the harbour, discreetly followed by the Rolls.

  Jo asked if Lili would care to stay the night on board the Minerva.

  Immediately wary, Lili explained that she had to sleep at the villa, since Serge telephoned every morning. Jo immediately said that she should be driven back at eleven that evening. He made no attempt to dissuade her.